WT Amplified Voices is a marketing campaign that promotes published work of BIPOC or racialized Canadian authors. The campaign was originally created to provide visibility to authors and their work during the COVID-19 pandemic when health restrictions prevented publicity opportunities like in-person book launches, literary festivals, and bookstore foot traffic.
This year’s campaign will promote winners of the 2023 Writers’ Trust McClelland & Stewart Journey Prize. The award is given annually to emerging writers for a short story or excerpt from a fiction work-in-progress, with all work eventually published in an anthology. This year’s Journey Prize Stories comprises of work from the best emerging Black writers, a decision made to promote the work of a group who has historically been marginalized by systemic inequality, including within the publishing ecosystem.
Beginning with this edition and continuing into future editions, each writer with a story selected for inclusion in the anthology will be considered a Writers’ Trust McClelland & Stewart Journey Prize winner and will receive $1,000. 2023 prize winners were selected by a jury including David Chariandy, Esi Edugyan, and Canisia Lubrin.
The WT Amplified Voices program is made possible in part by the Government of Canada. The Journey Prize is supported by James A. Michener’s donation of his Canadian royalty earnings from his novel Journey.
